


Follow Your Fire

by novashyperion



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AI Shiro (Voltron), Altean Shiro (Voltron), Because yes, Black Paladin Allura (Voltron), Castleship AI Shiro, F/M, M/M, Multi, Power Rangers 2017 Inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 05:08:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17400602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novashyperion/pseuds/novashyperion
Summary: Allura thought she was done with surprises waking up after 10,000 years to discover everything she knows gone. Then, she finds a room housing an AI...





	Follow Your Fire

****The AI had been a surprise. Allura wasn’t sure if she was sick of surprises yet or not. In what felt like the blink of an eye, everything she had known, was turning on its head.

Ten thousand years had passed. Altea was gone. Her father - was gone. The only things she had left were Coran and the Castle of Lions. Aliens called humans jettisoned away from their home planet of Earth (a strange name if she ever heard one) by the Red Lion of all things. The Lions...Ancients, they were scattered. Zarkon still lived.

It had only been a few hours and already Allura was wishing she could retire to her room and - what? Sleep more?

Hadn’t she done enough of that? Allura thought bitterly. Look what happened while she was sleeping. Maybe, just maybe, she could have made a difference, even just a small one.

...Maybe she could have still had her father with her now.

So, instead, as Coran wrangled the young Earthlings, Allura had gone wandering to make sense of everything. For each hallway she passed down, she let a new thought flit across her mind.

Earthlings, Allura mused, were such strange fragile creatures. She had made the mistake of shaking Hunk’s hand a little too hard and nearly broken it. She could only imagine what would happen if she had tried to throw one. Better not to. While fun for Altean friends, it might not be so great for Earthlings.

She took a right turn this time.

The Red Lion, most stubborn of them all, had been on Earth of all places. It had accepted Keith into its cockpit first, then all the others had filed in. That was a thought to file away. The Red Lion would have had no issue in shutting its doors had it only accepted just one. But it had flown galaxies away to return to the Castle of Lions.

...And then promptly locked itself up in a particle field into its garage.

Two lefts later, Allura could feel her shoulders beginning to sag. Just a little. The pulsing at the front of her head was starting to dull.

It was hard to tell what the Lions wanted, especially with them scattered across the galaxy, but she was hoping that it meant that the six of them would now be - a team.

(That thought made Allura’s headache come back.)

She already knew how this was going to be. Red would not allow a new pilot before it deemed them worthy. Part of that worthiness lied teamwork. Temperamental as the Red Lion may be, hardest to control, it was also right hand of Voltron. It valued teamwork above all else. Unless they could come together as one, Red would not open, and the other Lions would remain lost.

Allura laid her fingers to her temple and screwed her eyes shut. Her fingers brushed along her crown, the metal cool against her skin. After a few ticks and with a great exhale, Allura opened her eyes. She had to blink. She didn’t recognize this door. The nameplate read “holoroom”. She furrowed her brows.

She had grown up here all her life, but she had never known there was a holoroom. She placed her fingers on the scanner. The doors slid open.

The room was dark. It remained so even as she stepped inside. It wasn’t until the door slowly slid back shut that Allura felt a brief panic rise in her.

With a tremor in her voice, Allura called out into the room. “Hello?”

With a hum, the room seemed to power on. From the ground up, a blue light flickered on. It raced around the circumference of the room, an image flickering fast around Allura as the room woke up. In a flush of light, a wild field of juniberries sprung to life, like the fields she had run in as a child. Miles and miles long, meeting into the mountains that surrounded the capital where the castle originally lay. Even the sky overhead was its familiar pink, the shadow of Altea’s two moons in the distance.

A tear had fallen from her eye before she had even realized it. One became two, became a rainfall. Allura was wiping with futility at her chin as the tears kept coming. Each one an apology to a flurry of names and faces she had failed. The dull ache that she had felt when she’d awoken had morphed until it seemed as though her entire body was locked with heart ache. Her body one big squeeze of sorrow, until it felt as though she were stiff and unable to move. Slowly, she collapsed, tucking down until her knees had hit the simulated dirt.

Alone in the quiet, Allura cried.

-

Allura didn’t know how much time had passed. After a while, the tears had dried along her cheeks until she was simply just in, out - in, out, and the rise and fall of her own chest. Head full of fog and eyes unfocused. She sat up, resting back as she curled her ankles underneath her and rested her hands in her lap.

No thought seemed to come, nothing but fuzz and empty space. The quiet of the cosmos, almost like the Astral Plane her father had long since told her of, where courageous spirits, at the crossroads of time and space, existed. Allura wondered if that’s where her mind had gone, floating around up there even as her body sat in a fake Altea, wishing for what she could not have.

In the corner of her vision, a new light flickered. A purple thing like an incoming call. It beeped twice, hummed, then beeped three more times. After a few ticks of silence, it began the sequence again.

Slowly, Allura raised to her feet and shuffled towards it.

She parted through the walls of juniberry flowers, cutting a path for herself as she crept closer to the light. When she reached it, a holopad lay still sending the sequence. Reaching towards it, she passed her hand over it.

Instantly, it stopped in the middle of its sequence, flashing a solid purple before flickering wildly. In a burst of light, a figure began to morph. It grew, taller even than Allura, its appendages taking shape and color bleeding into the face. Dark hair like night,  and Altean ears and purple marks took form. A traditional Altean officer’s garb came next, though the shoulder cape fluttered behind, just as high-knee boots finished off the image.

Allura couldn’t help the gasp when the AI’s eyes open. Gray, sharp, and yet incredibly kind. The AI settled it’s gaze on her. The AI placed a closed fist to its chest then bent at the waist.

“Greetings, Princess Allura. I am the Castle Ship’s AI, as appointed by King Alfor. I have waited long to meet you.” Even the AI’s voice was appealing. Quiznack.

“Hello,” Allura answered, a little shyly. “I was unaware you were even here. I’m - sorry.”

The AI’s eyes softened. “I am the one who is sorry, Princess. Your father had me created only for use in emergencies. Should something happen, should he fail, then I was here to be of aid to you.”

“Me?” Allura couldn’t keep the bafflement from her voice.

“Yes, you. King Alfor had the utmost confidence in you. You can help bring peace to the universe. But not alone. That is why I am here, that is why Coran remains by your side.” The AI paused. “Coran is with you, right?”

Allura couldn’t help her laugh. “Yes, he is. He’s with our guests.”

The AI’s eyes narrowed. “Guests?”

With a bit of a teasing grin, Allura regarded the AI. She clasped her hands behind her back and leaned towards her companion. “Yes, they call themselves Earthlings. The Red Lion was apparently hidden on their planet and saw fit to, ah, make off with them, as they say?”

The AI smiled, ducking his head. “Yes, I see.” He looked to her again. “That is good to hear. We can begin working towards collecting the lions again. We can begin building rebel forces and efforts. If the Red Lion brought them all here, then it has accepted them as potential candidates to rebuild the team. I would like to meet your companions.”

“Are you not trapped here?” Allura asked.

The AI smiled again, a bit of a smug tone in his expression. “Not necessarily. It is true I have been waiting for you to awaken me, but with your permission, I can have run of the ship myself. Do I have the honor of traveling the castleship, Your Highness?”

Allura settled her hands to her hips, squaring a look at the AI. The smile on the AI’s face only grew wider as they stared at each other until Allura couldn’t help a smile of her own.

“Permission granted. I will meet you on in the control room.”

A light flashed, the juniberries fluttered as a massive wind seemed to sweep along them. The AI exhaled.

“I’ll race you there,” Was all he said before he was blinking out of sight.

Allura couldn’t help but gape. She twirled on her heel, racing out of the room, cursing the slow opening door, and yelling down the halls.

“That is unfair!”

She might have even something like the chime of laughter as she booked it to the control room.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I’m cleaning out my drafts and found this little gem. It only had notes and nothing worked on, so here’s a first draft is last draft. I quite like this, actually.
> 
> In this AU Keith’s half Altean because it’s an AU and I can do that. I figure him being all like “this mysterious power out here i can feel” would work a little better if he was like half altean and stuff. So Krolia is Altean instead because yeah. I flip flopped around about whether to make Keith blue or red, and I didn’t write down why I had originally put him under Blue in my doc notes but yaknow maybe it’ll jump out at me in the middle of the night and I’ll know.
> 
> A brief little info. The whole “unlock lions as we go” thing is a bit of throwback/link back to a previous fic I did. It was Power Rangers 2017 inspired and I basically wanted them to like, have to be a strong team before Blue would open up and let them leave Earth. And until they continued to grow and get along as a team, and searched for the remaining lions, they couldn’t unlock/find them. So it’s a bit more like that here.
> 
> The difference here is, Red was more like. Ok so, we really don’t have time to waste on Earth, we’re gonna go, but once we get to the castleship then I’m not being this generous again.
> 
> Also, you know, one day I just woke up like, “What if I hurt myself with Shallura?” and here we are.
> 
> I can't guarantee how far I'll be taking this story but I hope I can keep on it for a good while. at least up until they each get a lion, idk. like until she unlocks black.
> 
> tumblr post-->http://shyfoxes.tumblr.com/post/181966103653/follow-your-fire-shallura


End file.
